Posts Tagged ‘Self harm’
Still in the land of the living…
Posted on: December 4, 2012
…but thinking of starting a new blog. Fresh starts and all that.
I was almost-recovered & hence completely forgot to update. But since beginning treatment for PTSD, I am now not-very-recovered-at-all and so thinking it might help to start writing again. They say it has to get worse to get better but I’m not sure how much worse it can get.
Recovery of an unspecified nature.
Posted on: May 10, 2012
What, precisely, is recovery? Because this concept is starting to get my goat.
The Mental Health Foundation describes it thus:
What is recovery?
For many people, the concept of recovery is about staying in control of their life despite experiencing a mental health problem. Professionals in the mental health sector often refer to the ‘recovery model’ to describe this way of thinking.
Putting recovery into action means focusing care on supporting recovery and building the resilience of people with mental health problems, not just on treating or managing their symptoms.
Rethink Mental Illness has this to say on the topic of recovery:
Recovery as a concept is about the process of building a meaningful life as defined by the person with a mental health problem themselves.
There are four key component processes suggested:
- Finding and maintaining hope
- The re-establishment of a positive identity
- Finding meaning in life
- Taking responsibility for one’s life
Trying to work out how these relate to my individual story is difficult. Compared to how my mental health was 6 months ago or more, I could be considered “recovered”. My self harm is no longer severe, if it occurs at all. I’m attempting living without medication and I haven’t needed a “break” (of a psychiatric-facility nature) in this time.
There are still things that can trigger a full-scale emotional tits-up, things which I don’t thing are that obvious or understandable. Hearing a story about abuse or bullying in the news won’t set anything off, but I can spend a week or more in a state of constant anxiety over particular nicknames, or songs, or smells, or people behaving in a certain way. I still wake up screaming from nightmares and I still dissociate, quite noticeably “going offline” at times.
This is where I get confused. If I view myself from the point of the “model” of PTSD, these could be thought of as “symptoms” that will be “recovered” from. I’m starting to doubt how valid this is though. Not doubting the validity of the experience, but who would react quite normally and sane-ly when confronted with traumatic experiences? Wouldn’t adapting to such experiences as a normal part of life signal madness on someone’s part? Society as a whole would be in even more of a mess if we had no sense of justice, or self-preservation, or self-protection or… feelings.
So I don’t really know where this leaves me. Maybe the time will come when I’m not as severely affected by things. At what point can I say “that’s enough recovery, the rest of it is just being human”? Or vice versa maybe, how much of my reactions are being human and how much is mental illness?
Nothing of note to add.
Posted on: April 23, 2012
I guess I’m not been updating because I thought things were going well, but I have returned because they are not. Which means you get to put up with me, if you are reading. Sorry.
The crisis team have been fantastic with me this time and not even putting the phone down when I start off the conversation with “I am so *bleep*ing angry, I don’t know what to say” and end with sobbing uncontrollably and repeating “Why can’t I just die?” all the time.
The thing I hate about becoming unwell is that I turn into a total bitch and I don’t even mean to. I curse my family, I curse my friends, I curse God, I curse everything and everyone around me. Nobody will let me die, how dare they try to stop me dying? They are selfish, all of them are selfish *bleeps* and they can *bleep* off and not bother pretending to cry at my funeral (I know, I’m terribly dramatic..) Then when I’ve “snapped out of it”, for want of a better phrase, I want to die because I’m such a horrible person and how could I act like this and I don’t deserve to be alive and…and…and…and…rinse and repeat.
My illness is no excuse for my behaviour. I just wish I could stop. Stop being like this. I’ve self harmed a couple of times but I’m not going to consider it a full relapse because it wasn’t really a conscious decision. It’s not really dissociation, but I don’t know what I’m doing at the time.
An unrelated physical health problem is leaving me in constant pain, which isn’t making me the most fun person to be around either. Feeling very sorry for myself.
Other than that… nothing exciting is happening….
I thought I’d put together some ramblings about things that I learnt over the course of several years of injuring myself, mainly from cutting. This doesn’t sound like any experience you could learn from, especially when I’m only 18 and therefore not necessarily old enough to have “learnt” anything! However, on reflection, and after going through what feels like thousands of distraction lists on the internet to kick this thing in the ass for good… I think I’ve actually got some good understanding from it. I hope it doesn’t sound too preachy and it’s just my experience but hey. Why not.
Lesson one: Self harm is…. invalidating.
Sounds obvious but it definitely wasn’t to me. I felt/feel/etc. as though being able to injure myself as a way of processing my feelings was very validating. I could “see” my pain. I could “take care of” my pain. I was being nice to myself. I was helping myself feel better.
Not really.
Being told that you have made yourself look a mess by A+E staff when you are getting stitched up is not validating. Having stitches put in without anaesthetic because “self harmers would like it too much” is not validating. Causing yourself painful scarring is not taking care of yourself. Trying not to get infections, buying first aid supplies, rehearsing your “story” for the triage nurse…. it doesn’t deal with the actual problem. Having to hide wounds, bandages, scars, feeling ashamed to wear shorts or swimwear does not improve bad feelings about yourself. It doesn’t take care of the pain, it just gives you something else to think about for a while but it comes back. And like many addictions, you start off small, maybe “recreationally”. Before you know it, you’re down a road that can be really hard to come back out of.
That’s not to say that self harm hasn’t played a strange role in keeping me safe sometimes. The alternative to releasing those pent-up feelings would have likely resulted in a suicide attempt, and it was very helpful to have professionals that encouraged me to limit my self-injury, rather than ban it completely. But after 5 or so years of hurting myself, I’m not really any further forward. I have a lot of scars that hurt and a lot of horrible memories of being in hospital. It makes me sad to think about. I’m nowhere near recovery as yet and there are times I’ve hurt myself when dissociated and not really in control of what I’m doing. On a conscious level, though, I feel like I’m starting to figure out things I can do that make me feel a bit better without resorting to harming. Self harming didn’t really give me an immediate fix and neither do distractions. Maybe the “trauma” or whatever is just something I will have to deal with at some level for a long time yet. It’s very painful and upsetting but there is a certain freedom in trying to accept how you feel and realising there is no magic quick fix, whether it comes from a blade or from a DVD.
It’s crappy and it’s fine for it to be crappy, cos crappy things happened. And maybe I will go through all those freakin’ distractions and end up slipping up anyway but that’s okay because I’m human. And I tried. I’m not a failure if I slip up, sometimes the distractions just don’t work. But learning about them is a process, like learning to cope with uncomfortable feelings.
It’s a process, rather than a cure. Maybe I needed to get to the states of self harm I’ve been in to go through that process? Who knows.
(…and other mental things)
To put the title into context, “rage quit” is a kind of internet language speaking thing, oft-used when someone exits out of an online game they are losing, storming out of a chatroom or a DFE moment – “delete f…. everything”. Like facebook, etc. It is quite literally, quitting with rage. I estimate that I’m not that far away from rage-quitting life.
Although I primarily write about mental health on this blog, I haven’t really touched on the stigma and nasty comments that I get about it. People who don’t just have no understanding, but don’t WANT to have any understanding. People who say I am a danger because I’m mentally ill. People who say I cannot be reasoned with, am not worth talking to and am a chore to deal with. These aren’t professionals, but people that I have to associate with in daily life. Obviously I can’t put that into context, at least at this stage, but these are just a few examples.
Then there are the people that mock me for my career hopes, my hobbies, my skin colour, my culture, my clothes and… my hair. And tonight I went, for want of a better word, mad.
I was washing my hair, aware there were some kitchen scissors in the vicinity, left over from opening some packets. Me being me, I don’t feel that I’m at risk of “self harm” as in “suicide”, so razors, craft knives, scissors, etc. are always around. To cut a long story short, I started hacking at my hair. I wanted to make myself even uglier, for reasons unknown to me. The proximity of the blades to my face gave me even better ideas. Why don’t I just dig my eyes out? Even if I don’t get them out completely, I could at least blind myself. Then I’d never have to see my ugliness, my failure, my foul skin colour, my disappointing choices, my fat, my presence, my scars, ever again.
Thankfully, I think, I stopped myself. It’s a tempting thought. Harming my eyes and my face, this repulsive appearence of mine. As I say, I don’t necessarily feel at “risk”, so I don’t feel like it warrants ringing the helpline or the crisis team. I’m not angry or out of control. I feel in control, I feel quite rational and balanced. I don’t think killing myself would even be a particularly bad thing. If I’m such a waste, it’s not really like the world is going to miss out on anything.
I’m not as positive and stigma-fighting as I make out. I’m hurt. I’m ashamed of myself for things that I largely cannot help and I feel like I’m letting the side down because I’m ashamed.
Gosh. I’m a crap person. Really really crap.
Possible triggers for self harm, substance abuse, eating disorders and generally not very nice thoughts.
I have been released into the community, armed with benzodiazepines and not incredibly further forward than when I went in. My first night in my own bed involved DVDs, rum and a very poor excuse for a wound dressing. The night workers at the supermarket barely raise a brow when I arrive in the late evening at the self-checkout (how annoying is that woman’s voice?!) with various bottles and “sharps”. I don’t necessarily expect them to do anything, but seeing as nearly everyone I do know is indifferent at best towards this latest “episode”, it just makes me feel more invisible.
My team and I have come to an agreement that the aim is not treatment, per se, but management. It’s dreadful of me to say, but the term “management” makes me think of a palliative care patient. There is no treatment or hope – the vast arsenal of psychiatric and psychotherapeutic interventions have seemingly been tried, all that can be done for me now are sympathetic faces and making me as comfortable as possible while I wait to die. The poison that invaded me as a child has turned into some cancerous growth that is taking over my existence and I grieve for the person that I could’ve become, had this disease not taken it away.
I get even more upset when I think of how precarious the balance of my mind really is. I sit among people my age at college and wonder how many of them have families that need to know the protocol for having them detained under the Mental Health Act. It scares me that one day, my family will be faced with that decision, that I would have no control over what people do to me when control is the one thing I need so much. I understand now why people call it going mad. You are entering a strange land with laws and regulations that you don’t understand, in a language you don’t speak and every time you end up going down that path, you wonder if you’re going to return this time.
And I’m resentful and bitter and angry. When I eventually sleep, I am tortured by nightmares. When I’m awake, I’m back on the merry-go-round of cut/drink/purge/cut/drink/purge to just escape the chaos in my head. The sound of the phone ringing sets my heart pounding, someone coming up behind me makes me scream, I can feel thin layers of grains or seeds, some irritant, under the skin on my face. I can see it. I want to claw off the flesh and wash it away.
I don’t think I’m going to return from this one. I don’t know whether what’s happening in my head or what’s happened in reality is the scarier thing.
A mess.
Posted on: November 16, 2011
Not sure how to fix this mess. All I do is drink, purge, cut, exercise, starve, sleep. Rinse and repeat.
I don’t want to go into hospital or into a crisis centre or whatever because I’m scared of males at the moment but I can’t tell my care team that. Being in a mixed-gender environment 24/7 where I couldn’t self harm or drink would tip me over the edge. I don’t know how this episode is going to end. There’s no point in ringing the crisis team because I don’t know what’s wrong and I don’t know how to fix it and I don’t know if I want to fix it because I’m so bloody tired now.
My hamster is alive and that’s good and so are my cats and I bought some toy turtles to cheer myself up. I’ve deleted Facebook and stopped answering my phone because human interaction is painful. I’m seriously considering dropping out of college.
And my stash of alcohol has run out.
A change of topic: Careers?
Posted on: December 21, 2010
A bit of a change from the BPD/CMHT ranting. On the menu today is careers: deciding on one, deciding on one that will please everyone else in your life & the most useless reason for suicidal ideation ever..
So it’s a somewhat well known fact that some with BPD (mentioned BPD!! damnit) have difficulty with their sense of self/self image. Well, it’s actually part of the criteria. & this can manifest itself in rather dramatic changes in job, career choices, study choices, religion, sub-culture that one identifies with, etc. My religion has always stayed stable, but the biggy for me is career choices & study choices.
I changed my mind about three/ four times before settling on my performing arts course at college. Including applying for said courses, then ringing up & asking to be put down on the other course. Cue much confusion from my potential lecturers when it came to induction day. Now we are coming up to that time of the year when application forms are sent off, audition & interviews held & pro-plus/red bull becomes part of the staple diet ready for exams. Of course, I haven’t the foggiest about what I will be doing, come September ’11. I haven’t the foggiest what I will be applying for in the first place. Some very lucky people just know what they want to do with their lives, or know exactly what their talent is & how they will use it. Brilliant, awesome, lovely for you. Spare a though for us poor souls that bumble through life with smoked up glasses, not quite sure whether the lack of obstacles & increase in free choice is due to finally walking in the right direction, or finally walking over a cliff.
An important aspect of the personality of yours truly – I have a MASSIVE fear of doing something that isn’t “acceptable” to someone else. Monumental. I am not one of these young people who just love to shock & be individual. No, everything about me is moulded on some opinion of someone else. People don’t think I should be a dancer = discarded much-loved idea of studying dance further at college. People expect me to go to university = I am apparently going to university. To do what, exactly, I have yet to be told. Medicine, psychology & social work have been mentioned.
At one point, this would’ve been true. But there has been a great shift in my outlook recently, one that I don’t think will be very popular but here we go. I’m wondering whether I really want to study something like that & go into mental health. I’m tired of mental health, I’m tired of the medicine & the crappy ideas people get on how to treat it, I’m tired of the approaches to mental health that must be spewed out, even when they don’t work. I want to do something fun & creative & free & that isn’t going to remind me of some of the most dark moments of my life. & I feel the worst person on earth for thinking that. I want to surround myself with beautiful & inspiring & hopeful things, things that will make me enjoy being alive.
Helping other people, counselling, charity work, voluntary work.. this is all acceptable to other people. “She works with disadvantaged people.” “She’s a student doctor, you know.” Whereas “She’s at university studying fashion & where to get the best Americano’s” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. Or is it just me? I sound like such an evil, evil person, I know.
It’s such a stupid thing to feel suicidal over, absolutely pathetic, but I really feel now as if there’s no point in carrying on. I get nasty comments already about doing performing arts, I will be letting so many people down if I don’t keep up this facade. & I feel as if somehow I’m turning my back on all those people out there that are suffering. Because people who’ve suffered abuse & mental health problems generally want to turn around & help others going through the same thing, right? That’s the normal response. Except I don’t. I’m just being selfish & pathetic & disappointing everyone around me. The CRHT would reeeeally love me if I rang up, going “I can’t decide what to do at college & it’s making me want to kill myself.” Sorry, couldn’t help getting in just an teeeeny little snipe about the crisis team there…
I have no positive way to end this post, really. Apart from thank you for all the votes on the mental nurse site for this blog.
- In: Abuse | borderline personality disorder | CAMHS | Depression | Hospital | Mental Illness | Self harm
- 2 Comments
Things weren’t great, but I was safe to an extent. I’ve started self harming again, after almost 8 months free, which is bad but. I was getting out and doing stuff and trying to struggle on.
One fell off and banged his head.
The full punch-in-the-balls realisation about my past experiences has hit me. Hard. I’m trying to accept years of psychological and sexual abuse. My feelings, my trust in people, my sense of self have been raped, violated, vandalized. It’s like being in shock after a car crash, only to realise that you’re missing limbs but you couldn’t feel the pain until now. And then it hurts. Maybe there’s no word in the English language that can describe the pain of being violated, physically and emotionally. It’s the most horrible, degrading, destructive, vindictive, soul-tearing, heart-breaking thing ever. I feel disgusting and damaged and abused.
I’ve been spending most of the day in bed, crying, and crying in bed. I’ve eaten nothing but fish finger sandwiches. I managed to force myself to have a bath, but that was hard work. I could tell that I was heading up for “something” but I didn’t realise just what that something was.
Mummy called the doctor, the doctor said…
Last night, I made another less-than-well-planned kind-of suicide attempt. I remember doing that, being forced to take PRN and then everything is hazy from that. Then I woke up this morning, tried again in vain to open the medication case, had to get forced to take more PRN and call the crisis team before going to sleep. They came out to see me an hour or so later, and told me to try and keep myself safe for the next 24 hours until a plan can be sorted. Meanwhile, I’ve got permission to cut and the family have permission to give me the most PRN I can take safely, so that I sleep and don’t do anything. The nurses said hospital wouldn’t help but may be a necessity.
The great, great news is that because I’m soon going to be too old for CAMHS and too young for the CMHT… nobody knows what to do with me anyway. I won’t have CAMHS, the doctor I would’ve been seeing in the Adult Services only sees people from 18… inpatient CAMHS wouldn’t have me, it’s unlikely that an Adult’s unit would take me. They’ve admitted they actually don’t know what to do with me. I’m in a warped kind of mental health purgatory, waiting for punishment for my sin of being human and crazy.
I’m writing this because I need to talk it over to make sense of it, and because my last tablet hasn’t kicked in yet. I’m tempted to try something again. I really cannot cope anymore. I don’t want to cope anymore because it’s too hard and it hurts and I’m just disgusting and evil and sullied and bad and nasty and dirty. I wonder what’s going to happen tommorow…
I want to kill myself.
No more monkeys jumping on the bed.
Warning – This post contains strong and possibly disturbing references to self injury. Please don’t get any ideas from me or read this while in a vulnerable state.
Oh yes. I’m seriously beginning to think the depression is returning once again. And my mood had been relatively stable and brighter and therapy became positive and now. It’s not. I therefore enclose a list of warning signals of mine that means I’m going crazy again…
Early morning waking?
Yup. On a good night, I wake up at 5. A bad night could be 2 or 3 in the morning with no hope of getting back to sleep. Made worse by actually falling asleep around midnight.
Self-care going down the drain?
Life is horrible and painful, nothing is going to change so why should I bother washing or brushing my teeth? What’s going to happen? Nothing. I’m too tired. (Just incase my dentist is reading – I did brush my teeth after all. The only thing worse than having the crazies is having the crazies with a mouthful of fillings while stinking to high heaven).
Nothing is fun anymore?
I don’t have the energy, or the motivation, so there’s no point in even trying to make it fun.
Destructive thoughts returrning?
I won’t go into too much detail, but lets say it involved my imagination, my style of planning and knowing too much about what happens during a varicouse vein operation. I get obsessions like this. They range from jumping off things to breaking bones to performing “operations” on myself.
So yeah. I don’t know. I could be worrying too much, worrying that all the hard work I’ve put in is going to disappear. But then I try and look for warning signs so I can act. If I end up in A+E one more time with something mental-health related, they will probably ban me or something. OMG IT’S A CRAZY BORDERLINE PERSON TRYING TO GET ATTENTION, SEND HER AWAY, SEND HER AWAY!
Ew. Just. Ew. I’m tempted to just sit up all night watching DVDs and drinking tea, being left alone with my head is much much more worse than feeling tired all day. I’m tired all day anyway.
Sorry I couldn’t be more encouraging..
Living life on the borderline 